INFINITY-NETS (KSUZL), 2017
Acrylic on canvas
161.9×130.5 cm (63.7×51.3 inches)
Signed, titled and dated ‘YAYOI KUSAMA 2017 INFINITY-NETS KSUZL’ on the reverse

 

Provenance
OTA Fine Arts, Singapore
David Zwirner, New York
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2017

 

Phillips London: 12 February 2020
GBP 525,000 / USD 685,199

Source: Phillips
Yayoi Kusama – 20th Century & Contem… Lot 6 February 2020 | Phillips

 

Painted in 2017, INFINITY-NETS (KSUZL) is a resplendent example from Yayoi Kusama’s eponymous series, begun in the late 1950s and extending to the present day. Born in conjunction with Kusama’s relocation from Tokyo to New York in 1958, where she was introduced to the avant-garde school of Abstract Expressionism and the emerging movement of Minimalism, the artist’s Infinity Net paintings boast her most celebrated symbol – the spot – duplicated ad infinitum. In the present work, a subtly concealed red background glistens underneath an overarching orange web, exploring the lively interaction between the two pigments and the rhythmic lattice structure that unifies them.

In INFINITY-NETS (KSUZL), a plethora of polka-dotted nets ritualistically overlap each other in interweaving forms, creating larger, biomorphic shapes that waver from foreground to background. Kusama achieved this complex surface through a meticulous process enacted throughout her practice, whereby each dot is minutely placed atop a laid ground to create a perfectly attuned image. As a result, the nets seem to move across the surface symbiotically, activating an almost three-dimensional presence through the formation of larger spirals and veils. Trained in traditional Japanese Nihonga painting – a genre characterized by naturalistic realism – Kusama received a formal education in the techniques of perspective and shading to illustrate three-dimensional forms. As such, while entirely abstract, Kusama’s nets also possess a formal quality that recalls the modulation of tones found in monochromatic Nihonga works of the early 1900s.